Throughout my academic career, I have been extremely fortunate to have superb mentors whose successful methods of teaching I have tried to incorporate into my personal teaching philosophy. I am equally fortunate to have outstanding learned colleagues her
e at ASU with whom I can interact and develop new teaching methods and ideas. Based on those contacts and my own experiences in the classroom, my personal goals in teaching have resolved into three main objectives: to maintain and promote enthusiasm, prac
ticality and creativity in my chosen subject, Geography.

I believe enthusiasm is one of the most critical aspects of successful teaching. If an instructor fails to interest a student--if that instructor is unable to motivate a student--then it is likely that student will not succeed and the instructor
has done a disservice to the student and the profession. Motivation is particularly pertinent in an academic discipline such as Geography where there is an extremely limited number of majors entering the discipline as freshmen. In contrast to many subjec
ts, the number of majors in Geography is directly linked to the interest that we instructors generate in our large lecture 100-level classes (Introduction to Physical Geography and Introduction to Human Geography).

Consequently, I have particularly focused my efforts in my 100-level classes towards the goal of promoting interest and excitement about Geography--and Meteorology, in particular. By bringing discussion of real-world events such as tornadoes, hurricanes a
nd the greenhouse effect into the class, I strive to ignite students' own interest in the subject. My methods of instruction--video and slides of spectacular natural events, personal anecdotes, field trips and extracurriculum projects--all are especially
geared towards promoting interest in Geography. I personally measure my success in achieving this by the number of students who switch their majors into Geography based on their experiences in my 100-level classes. To my satisfaction over the last eight y
ears here at ASU, I have observed a larger and larger number of new majors in our discipline. I am particularly pleased at the increasing number of women and minorities in our program over the past few years--several of whom are now working for the Nation
al Weather Service, private and governmental agencies such as Salt River Project and in graduate programs around the country.

In addition, I and my colleagues have recently attempted to reach beyond the level of our 100-level classes to promote excitement and interest in Geography. We have given teaching inservices at many local grade and secondary schools, set up displays at
university functions such as the ASU Superbowl Experience and ASU's "Super Science" day, and developed strong connections with the local media (up and including having our Geography graduates and students working at local television stations as meteorolog
ists). I also feel fortunate to have been appointed as a contributing editor to Weatherwise, an educational magazine dedicated to promoting public interest in weather and meteorology.

Practicality may seem an odd component of my teaching philosophy but it arises due to the nature of training required for our specialty program in Climate and Meteorology of which I am in charge. The requirements of our program are based on the s
pecifications of the National Weather Service. In other words, in order to work for the National Weather Service, our students must fulfill a tough set of courses in mathematics, physics and meteorology. Consequently, I strive in my teaching (a) to give o
ur students a rigorous caliber of instruction of that will give them the ability to compete successfully for jobs against students from other universities, (b) as much as possible, to give them the opportunity for "extra" training and experience that will
give them additional leverage when competing for jobs, and (c) to incorporate the recommendations of former students working as professional meteorologists (with whom I strive to keep in contact) to improve and update my courses.

With regard to the second point, on my own time and contributing my own money, I have developed a major program--now in its eighth year--between ASU, the National Weather Service, and the local media called the "Arizona Thunderstorm Chase Project." This p
roject has our ASU students acting as "mobile eyes" for the National Weather Service during our summer thunderstorm season, the monsoon. I am pleased to find that this experience has (a) motivated our students by giving them hands-on experience, (b) have
allowed our students to develop networking skills with their potential employers, and (c) been recognized in the primary technical journal of meteorologists, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Promoting creativity is a facet of my personal teaching philosophy that I hold particularly dearNess is one of the most difficult to accomplish. However the effort is extremely worthwhile. It is my contention that the best students, the best grad
uate researchers, and ultimately the best professors are those who maintain and stress creativity in all aspects of their work. Consequently, I make a determined effort to avoid rote-learning and, instead, encourage student to develop their own methods of
learning and discover their talents. I personally make an effort to go beyond the normal and expected. For example, I have published, in addition to my fundamental research on computer climate modeling, a variety of professional articles on such odd topi
cs as "the weather associated with prison escapes" and "why didn't Columbus hit a hurricane in 1492?" These articles have produced much local and national interest--and potentially new majors.

As an example of creativity in the classroom, one subject that I teach--weather forecasting--is a skill that is both a science and art. Although it increases the difficulty in grading students' abilities, I maintain frequent 'real-world, real-time' foreca
sting exercises where students must take the same base information that the National Weather Service uses and, over the course of an hour or two, must develop real weather forecasts upon which they are then evaluated. As another example, rather than simpl
y use historical examples in studying Climate Change, I have developed exercises that use the concept of a hypothetical world to encourage students to test and evaluate the concepts they have learned in a new and hopefully exciting framework.

These three objectives--creativity, practicality and enthusiasm--mark my personal teaching philosophy. Although the accomplishments of my students in their post-graduate careers and their lives in general is undoubtedly due to their own abilities and tale
nts, their achievements give me hope that, at least to some degrees Shave been successful in meeting those objectives.

On the Development of a Real-Time Interactive
Storm
Observation Program in Phoenix, AZ. R.S.
Cerveny, S.
Calderon, N. Hoffmann, M. Franjevic. Bulletin
of the
American Meteorological Society, 73, 773-778.

Climatic Implications of Radiative Dispersion. R.S.
Cerveny
and J.A. Shaffer. 88th National Meeting of the
Associations of
American Geographers in Atlanta in April, 1993.

A Digitized Archive of South American Snow Cover.
Natalie
A. Williams, Randall S. Cerveny and Kenneth F. Dewey.
88th
National Meeting of the Associations of American
Geographers in Atlanta in April, 1993.

Climate and Cocaine. M. McGlade, R.S. Cerveny and R.
Henkel. 88th National Meeting of the Associations of
American
Geographers in Atlanta in April, 1993.

Escaper's Weather. B.R. Skeeter and R.S. Cerveny.
84th
National Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers
at Phoenix in March, 1988.

Ice-Age Hurricanes and Tropical Storms. J.S. Hobgood,
R.S.
Cerveny and J.N. Rayner. 84th National Meeting of the
Association of American Geographers at Phoenix in
March,
1988.

Use of the Balance Equation in Energy Balance
Modeling.
Randall S. Cerveny. Department of Geography,
University of
Nebraska.

1987

South American Snow Cover and the Southern
Oscillation.
R.S. Cerveny, B.R. Skeeter and K.F. Dewey. 83rd
National
Meeting of the Association of American Geographers at
Portland, Oregon in April, 1987.

A Climatology of Mean Monthly Snowfall for the
Conterminous United States: Temporal and Spatial
Patterns.
J .A. Harrington, R. S. Cerveny and K.F. Dewey. 83rd
National
Meeting of the Association of American Geographers at
Portland, Oregon in April, 1987.

Application of Temporal Statistics in Snow
Climatological
Studies. J.A. Harrington and R.S. Cerveny. 83rd
National
Meeting of the Association of American Geographers at
Portland, Oregon in April, 1987.

Unit-Vector Density Mapping. S.J. Lavin and R.S.
Cerveny.
83rd National Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers at Portland, Oregon in April, 1987.

1986

Mass-momentum Conservation in Energy Balance Models.
Presented at a special session on new climate models
at the
82nd National Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers at St. Paul, Minnesota in May, 1986.

CONSTABLE as a Classroom Climate Model. Randall
Cerveny and Robert Balling. Presented at a special
session on
classroom use of models at the 81st National Meeting
of the
Association of American Geographers at Detroit,
Michigan in
April, 1985.

Energy Balance Climate Modeling: Sensitivity Tests.
Randall
Cerveny. Presented at a special session on climate
modeling at
the 80th National Meeting of the Association of
American
Geographers at Washington, D.C. in April, 1984.

1983

A Dynamic Parameterization of a Surface Wind Field
into a
Sellers Type Global Climate Model. Randall Cerveny.
Presented at the 79th National Meeting of the
Association of
American Geographers at Denver, Colorado in April,
1983.

Additional Professional Activities

Consulting editor, Weatherwise

Reviewer for:

Journal of Geophysical
ResearchTheoretical and Applied
ClimatologyProfessional GeographerAnnals of the AAGGeographical ReviewJournal of Geography
National Science Foundation
(NSF)